Snapshots of What Matters Most: Using Resident-Employed Photography to Articulate Attachment to Place

Abstract

Sense-of-place research has grown in recent years and has attracted interest from a diverse range of disciplines. Beckley (2003 Beckley , T. M. 2003 . The relative importance of sociocultural and ecological factors in attachment to place . In Understanding community-forest relations , ed. L. Kruger , 105 – 126 . USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PNW-GTR-566 . Portland , OR : Pacific Northwest Research Station . [Google Scholar]) suggests that it may be possible to disaggregate persons' attachment to biophysical versus sociocultural aspects of sense of place. Stedman (2003 Stedman , R. C. 2003 . Is it really just a social construction?: The contribution of the physical environment to sense of place . Society Nat. Resources 16 : 671 – 685 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Beckley (2003 Beckley , T. M. 2003 . The relative importance of sociocultural and ecological factors in attachment to place . In Understanding community-forest relations , ed. L. Kruger , 105 – 126 . USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PNW-GTR-566 . Portland , OR : Pacific Northwest Research Station . [Google Scholar]) challenge researchers to experiment with new methods for examining the subject. This research addresses the challenges through the use of resident-employed photography. The method was used to elicit sense-of-place values in four communities across Canada. Participants took photographs of things that most attached them to their communities or region. Participants were interviewed about their photographs, and 937 photo-narrative data points were created and analyzed. The analysis involved ascribing photo-narratives to single response categories. Residents distributed their photographs fairly evenly between sociocultural and biophysical dimensions of their communities; however, many attachments involve both sociocultural and biophysical influences.